LONDON: British vacuum technology firm Edwards pulled its up to 450 million pound London listing on Friday, saying its private equity owners did not want to go ahead with the share sale due to market uncertainty. On Thursday sources close to the deal said it would price at the bottom of an indicated 200 to 270 pence per share range if the initial public offering (IPO) went ahead, but no message was put out to investors to say that order books were covered.
At 200 pence per share the company would have been valued at around 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion); below the 1.5 billion its owners CCMP Capital and Unitas Capital valued it at in September when banks were hired to explore a sale or flotation.
"Although there was strong interest from institutional investors, the selling shareholders, CCMP Capital and Unitas International, elected not to proceed given equity market uncertainty," the company said in a statement. CCMP and Unitas, both private equity spin-outs from JP Morgan, each own around 45 percent of the firm's ordinary shares. The remaining 10 percent is held by staff and management.
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